Ex-tech CEO who blasted 'degenerates’ hosts S.F. homeless event

Greg Gopman, the ex-tech CEO who once slammed the city’s homeless, speaks at the town hall meeting he organized.

Greg Gopman, the ex-tech CEO who once slammed the city’s homeless, speaks at the town hall meeting he organized.

Photo: Amy Osborne, The Chronicle

Image 2 of 2

Darcel Jackson, a San Franciscan who has been homeless for two years due to unemployment, confronts Greg Gopman about an unanswered email regarding ideas that could help the homeless at the Nourse Auditorium on Wednesday, March 11, 2015. less

Darcel Jackson, a San Franciscan who has been homeless for two years due to unemployment, confronts Greg Gopman about an unanswered email regarding ideas that could help the homeless at the Nourse Auditorium on ... more

Photo: Amy Osborne, The Chronicle

Ex-tech CEO who blasted 'degenerates’ hosts S.F. homeless event

1 / 2

Back to Gallery

Several hundred tech workers, homeless-service providers, politicians and other San Franciscans gathered Wednesday night with a goal of identifying solutions to one of the city’s most vexing problems: homelessness.

The town hall was organized by Greg Gopman, the former CEO of tech company AngelHack who made headlines in December 2013 for a Facebook post deriding homeless people as “degenerates,” likening them to hyenas and saying they shouldn’t be in Mid-Market, where business people work. After being blasted online and in the media, Gopman studied the city’s homelessness problem for a year and organized the town hall meeting to share ideas for solving it.

Gopman mostly stayed out of sight Wednesday in the balcony of the Nourse Auditorium, which he rented, while professionals in the homeless-services field took the stage.

Rose Broome, who founded HandUp, a charitable giving website that allows donors to contribute to individual homeless people, said it’s confounding that San Francisco has such a big, intractable homeless problem.

Related

“Why in a society with so much wealth, so much innovation and so much compassion are people still sleeping on our streets at night?” she asked, adding that all residents know what it’s like to pass a homeless person on the street and in need of money.

“I always have a feeling of wanting to do something, but not knowing what,” she said. “I think that’s brought a lot of us here today.”

City’s innovations

The audience heard about some government-led innovations, including Mayor Ed Lee’s new navigation center in the Mission District that’s intended to be a short-term way station for homeless campers.

The crowd also heard about homegrown ideas from residents including Broome and Doniece Sandoval, whose new nonprofit, Lava Mae, turns old Muni buses into spaces with showers for the homeless.

Attendees including Arondo Washington Cox, who supervises a city-sanctioned tent encampment in the Seattle area, discussed innovations from other cities. Camp Unity has existed for two years, and its population of 50 homeless residents relocates to a new site every 90 days so the camp doesn’t create too big a disturbance in a neighborhood.

“In San Francisco, I heard that there’s a lot of free thinking, and they should be open to the ideas and benefits of tent encampments,” Washington Cox said before the forum. San Francisco has long struggled with homeless encampments, which are cleared by city officials but often pop back up.

No one on Wednesday argued the city’s homeless problem is close to being solved. San Francisco spends $165 million annually on services for homeless people, but the number of people living on the streets and in shelters hasn’t budged since 2005. The 2013 count found 6,436 homeless adults, and city officials expect the upcoming results from a count in January to be about the same.

Poll numbers

Many San Francisco residents say the problem is getting worse. According to a recent Chamber of Commerce poll, 35 percent of voters said homelessness is a major issue facing the city — 10 points higher than two years ago. Fifty-eight percent said homelessness has gotten worse in the past year.

Many city officials and homeless-service providers were initially skeptical about Wednesday’s event because Gopman was the organizer. Several said someone who views homeless people as subhuman wasn’t the ideal person to be advising professionals.

But many of his critics seemed to have come around.

Kristie Fairchild, executive director of North Beach Citizens, which helps homeless people in that neighborhood, said, “Getting people together is really important.”

Focusing on 'impact’

Gopman said his priority isn’t to rehabilitate his tarnished image.

“My focus is on the impact,” he said. “I hope something comes of this.”

Gopman said he’s not done, and he will debut a video he made of San Francisco homeless people sharing their stories at an upcoming virtual reality conference in Los Angeles.

“It’s a very real, gritty experience, and you hear people’s stories and see their friends come by to join the party,” he said. “You get the experience of what it’s like to live on the streets.”

Gopman said he intends to organize a homeless town hall event like Wednesday’s on an annual basis.